ONJava 2005 Reader Survey Results, Part 2

28. Is there anything else you'd like to tell our Java editors? We'd love to hear from you.

Last week's ONJava 2005 Reader Survey Results, Part 1 put off covering this question, because 226 of you chose to answer this free-response question, thus demanding a more complete consideration. This article includes every response sent in by readers, other than those that are simple "thanks/great job"-type responses, and the occasional non sequitur (e.g., writing "Mmmmm... donuts," as was the case with response no. 209). We haven't edited any of the responses for style, grammar, or anything else. Think of it as a raw, annotated feed of reader commentary.

Your Responses

Like to see you cover Jakarta commons more closely and other similar open-source packages. Best practices types of articles are the
most beneficial.

Thanks. Covering the major open source frameworks is, outside of the Java library and core J2SE/J2EE libraries, our bread and butter. We'll take a look to see what in Jakarta merits more coverage.

There's a bug that unchecks question 2 if a required question wasn't answered. Just so you know :)

More articles on how to deploy and manage apps. Still a voodoo art.

You're right, J2SE deployment is a real pain point. Joshua Marinacci just did a two-parter on java.net about Java Web Start (parts 1 and 2), but there are other options: commercial apps like InstallAnywhere and InstallShield, Mac OS X .app's, etc.

Please update more frequently

As an advertising-supported site, there's only so much content we can acquire and produce, but all the O'Reilly Network sites are trying some new things to create fresher sites within that constraint. Keep watching this site and others in the network and let us know what you think.

Note: Eight other responses asked for more content or more frequent updates.

Well, I just saw the new "Building J2EE projects with Maven" article and laughed histerically... really, who in their right mind would
build an enterprise project with that peice of crap? ;)

Um, OK. We've seen lots of people using Maven, but to each his own...

The RSS feeds are a bit flaky. Might be a Thunderbird issue, but other feeds seem to be fine.

Can you send a bug report to

Articles are too Oracle biased

Really? I looked through our database and we haven't run an article with Oracle in its title for years.

I love the cookbook style articles and books. I'd like to see more about interoperability between .NET and Java. We do loads of C#
front ends and Java backends. SOAP is a PITA when moving bigger chunks around.

Interesting article idea, thanks.

I think there should be a shift in focus on the articles. Too many say, "Ooh look - this product has feature X, and here's how it
works." It would be far more compelling if they said, "I'm going to build this useful/cool thing. Here's why product Y is the tool for the
job, and here's how to get the best out of it."

I like this style of article too, but it doesn't always work in a 2,000-word space. The risk is that you can have too much "extra stuff" for building the cool app that doesn't really apply to "product Y," but needs to be shown as a basic part of building the cool thing. One thing we'll work on with an author is making sure the bulk of the article serves their real purpose. For example, sometimes the idea is to show how to build something, sometimes it's to show how a given API works. Those really are two different kinds of articles and while each is valuable, we try to help the author pick one and stay true to it.

1) Increase frequency of articles. Once a week is too less. 2) Cover a best of blog posts -- every quarter or so. 3) Cover Scott
Berkun type articles

Blogs are going to be a bigger part of the site soon. Watch for them. Scott's stuff is great, and we hope you've enjoyed his articles from ONLamp, like How to Decide What Bugs to Fix, that we've featured on ONJava.

JOnAS is a J2EE application server, it should be listed :) it's even in redhat's distribution.

We listed it last year and about 2 percent of readers reported using it. This year, as a write-in, it got less than 1 percent.